LONDON GILT-EDGED MARKET

Press, Volume LXXXV, Issue 25878, 10 August 1949, Page 8

LONDON GILT-EDGED MARKET

SOME STOCKS SUFFER HEAVILY

LONDON, August 8. How thoroughly demoralised the giltedged market has become was demonstrated to-day in dismaying fashion by a fresh nose-dive in prices, states the city editor of the London "Daily Telegraph.” Only a moderate volume of selling was sufficient to send quotations for key stocks down by anything from one to one and a half points. At a rough calculation, to-day’s depreciation on the whole of the gilt-edged list was well over £100,000,000. War Loan, down £1 7s 6d at £94—less than a point above the £93 2s 6d touched in the Dunkirk crisis of 1940—was again among the casualties. Treasury 2J per cents, plumbed a new low at £7O. *

Another heavy sufferer was the new British Gas stock, which fell q point to £B9 10s. This is the stock which holders of gas investments, whose values are now being fixed, are being called on under the Government’s nationalisation plan, to accept at its face/value of par. The “Daily Telegraph” states that it is hard to imagine a more glaring injustice than the issue of this stock as compensation at its full par value, when its market price is showing a depreciation of IOJ per cent.